Miracle reports are often offered as corroboration for the Gospel message of salvation. For example, "doubting" Thomas was admonished for questioning reports that Jesus was raised from the dead: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." And in other parts of the New Testament, faith in what one has not seen for himself is often praised: "We walk by faith, not by sight." Since an argument from the Bible assumes the soundness of an argument from miracles, if the latter fail, then all religions grounded in the biblical text are undercut.

In A Lawyer Looks at the Trials of Jesus: Using Legal Apologetics to Defend the Gospel Story, Christian legal apologist Matt Vega attempts to defend the Gospel account of Jesus' resurrection by arguing that the presence of twenty-five legal errors in Jesus' Jewish and Roman trials prove that the execution of Jesus was that of an innocent man. He then goes on to argue that, when combined with other 'facts,' this in turn 'proves' that Jesus miraculously resurrected from the dead. In this review retired attorney Robert G. Miller argues that Vega's arguments simply do not show any of the key points that Vega claims to show. Miller concludes that Vega's book only superficially addresses traditional legal apologetics, and furthermore that it doesn't even begin to establish either Jesus' innocence of the accusations leveled against him, or that he was resurrected from the dead.

In this article National Center for Science Education deputy director Glenn Branch reviews Graham Oppy's scholarly and meticulous, yet still accessible, Naturalism and Religion. After defining naturalism as the thesis that all causal entities and causal powers are natural, and that the best means for identifying those entities and powers is the scientific method, Oppy goes on to define a religion as a belief system that, among other things, is committed to the existence of non-natural causal entities and/or powers, and thus is incompatible with naturalism. As might be expected, Oppy argues that naturalistic big pictures balance the virtues of scientific theories best given all of the available evidence. At mid-way Oppy assesses well-known theistic arguments against naturalism from Alvin Plantinga and Michael Rea and then goes on to consider general Thomistic critiques. The book then turns to the extent to which science does, and does not, conflict with religion. After assessing a number of arguments against the explanatory power of naturalism, the final chapter highlights the combination of the minimal ontological commitments and great explanatory power of naturalism: we know that natural causal entities and powers exist, but have little evidential reason to posit the existence of anything more.

What is faith, atheism, and agnosticism? How should these words be understood? Why is this debate important? Who is right, and why does it matter? In this essay John Loftus tackles these issues, offering insights that are sure to enlighten us all.